IGEL Etherminal 3X

A low-cost Ethernet-based X terminal, the
Etherminal is a box 2.25 inches high, 12.5 inches wide, and about
11 inches deep. In other words, it is just large enough to hold a
monitor. It is powered by a 386 SX-40 processor, 4 (or 8) MB of
RAM, and 2MB of ROM, with video provided by a standard Cirrus Logic
video chip and Ethernet provided by a standard AT/LANTIC chip. Add
your favorite mouse, keyboard, and monitor to the inexpensive base
box and plug it into your Ethernet network (all three common
interface types are included), and you are ready to work. This is
standard ISA PC hardware done with an inexpensive
everything-on-the-motherboard approach. Said another way: this is
hardware that can run Linux.

And it does run Linux. While the Etherminal is sold as an
inexpensive X terminal, it is a standalone diskless workstation
configured as an X terminal. Since it is built on freely available
software including Linux, XFree86, and fvwm, IGEL is able to sell
it for less than if they licensed any commercial operating system.
Also, since Linux is resource-frugal, they are able to take
advantage of low-performance hardware to make an inexpensive X
terminal with reasonable low-end performance.

This is not a speed demon. Graphics-intensive programs do not
run quickly. This is not a detriment: the Etherminal is optimized
for cost, not for speed. (However, note that it will become faster
in the version that IGEL intends to introduce next year, which will
include a 486SX CPU.) If you need a faster, more capable, and quite
possibly less expensive replacement for character-based terminals,
the Etherminal may well meet your requirements, for several
reasons.

First, it is easy to set up, using a built-in graphical
configuration utility that comes up automatically the first time
the Etherminal is booted, and can be easily started at any other
time. While it can be hosted by remote machines for centralized
administration, it defaults to running on its own, which makes
dropping it on someone's desk—as an easy and inexpensive way of
providing X connectivity—a one or two-minute job. It also has
sensible defaults for X-Windows setup; you will have no need to
spend hours fiddling with an XF86Config file to get X to work
right—just be careful not to tell it that you have a more capable
monitor than you actually have, as doing so may be difficult to
recover from quickly. However, the configuration program provides
far more capability than this: multiple languages, keyboards, and
boot methods are all available, among other things.

Second, it does not require any other X-capable machine on
the network. Local terminal sessions to any TCP/IP-capable host are
easy to establish.

Third, while the Etherterminal is easy to set up in a
“standalone” mode, it is also just as easy to configure it to
depend on XDMCP and remote font servers, to download its X server
from a centralized server, to run a local or remote window manager,
and to do complete centralized maintenance if you wish. Unlike some
X terminals, the Etherminal gives you complete control over
this—and comes set up to work out of the box. It is both
“plug-and-play” and configurable, a useful combination.

Lastly, if you are competent with Linux, you can bring up a
“local” shell session. You will be in a simple shell on a Linux
system, able to investigate the file system, including the /proc
file system, able to directly execute the executables there. This
is not usually particularly useful, but IGEL hasn't tried to hide
this from the curious user or administrator, to their
credit.

Michael K. Johnson
is the Editor of Linux Journal and wishes he had spare time to spend
pretending to be a Linux guru. You can reach him via e-mail at
johnsonm@ssc.com.